Red, White,
and Without a Clueby Ken Sanders
www.dissidentvoice.org
May 21, 2005

In
the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, America naively asked in its stunned
stupor, "Why do they hate us?" In consoling us, our fearless leaders
appealed to our collective sense of superiority and self-righteousness by
explaining that the Muslim world (a.k.a. "they") hate us because of what
we stand for: freedom, democracy, Mom, baseball, and apple pie. Comforted,
we patted ourselves on our collective back for being so gosh-darn
wonderful and condemned the savage heathens who wanted nothing less than
to destroy all that is right and good in the world -- us.

Thanks to a recent confluence of events involving our interaction with the
Muslim world, it is clear that "they" do hate us for what we stand for.
Unfortunately, what we stand for is not freedom, democracy, nor any other
high-minded ideal. Rather, we stand for arrogance, barbarism, and
violence.

Sure. We talk a lot about freedom and democracy and bringing such
enlightenment to the Muslim world. The thing is, we stop far-short of
actually putting those ideals into practice. Instead, we look at the
people of the Muslim world as being somehow inferior and not really
deserving of the noble gifts so generously bestowed upon them by America
the Almighty. But, as pitying nobility, bestow we must.

Take, for instance, our penchant for torturing, degrading, and
dehumanizing Muslims whom we routinely round up as part of our
never-to-end war on terror. We note how those silly, unenlightened Muslim
men are ashamed by nudity, so we stack them naked in human pyramids. We
force them to masturbate in front of a crowd of gawking U.S. soldiers, men
and women. We smear them with shit, or, better yet, with what they believe
to be menstrual blood, fresh from a female soldier's crotch. We attach
wires to their extremities and tell them, oh so teasingly, that if they
move... zap!

We force them to dig their own graves, fire shots over their heads, and
then laugh hysterically when the stupid sand-niggers realize in a mix of
horror and relief that they really haven't been executed. Then, after the
sub-human Muslims finish wetting themselves like untrained dogs, we
chuckle a bit more and let them go.

We desecrate their holy text and mock their religion in order to break
their spirits during interrogation. We kick the Koran, piss on it, shit on
it, cut it up with scissors. With Rumsfeld's blessing, we confiscate their
religious trinkets and forcibly shave their facial hair. But what's the
big deal? After all, ours, the Christian god, is the only true god. Theirs
is but a false idol, undeserving of respect, much less of worship and
adulation. Indeed, according to legend, our god is the benevolent
protector and savior of America, our blessed nation. Theirs is but a
blood-thirsty savage, worshiped by other dirty, smelly, blood-thirsty
savages.

We march into towns like al-Qaim and Fallujah, ostensibly to rout out
"foreign fighters" who for some reason use our occupation of Iraq as an
excuse for waging Jihad. In the name of efficiency, however, we bomb
entire neighborhoods to kill a handful of insurgents. Non-insurgent
townspeople are forced to evacuate and live in ad-hoc refugee camps in the
desert, leaving what little they have behind. They struggle to stave off
thirst and starvation as they watch plumes of black smoke replace their
homes. After we declare victory and withdraw, those whom we claim to be
liberating return to towns reduced to rubble, without power, water, or
sewer. Even the hospitals are gone. We blew them up to kill the insurgents
rumored to be hiding inside.

Who cares that the "liberated" have nothing to return to, no water to
drink, no food to eat, no hospital for when they become sick with
dysentery or cholera? Not us. We only care that our military was
successful and that insurgents died. If the "liberated" dare complain
about such collateral matters as dead or wounded loved ones or homes
reduced to rubble, we write them off as just a bunch of Muslim ingrates
who fail to appreciate how lucky they are to receive American benevolence.

The results of our inherent distaste for the Muslim world are evident.
Thousands of ungrateful Shiites took to the streets of Iraq denouncing the
U.S. occupation of their country. In an act of contemptuous disrespect for
their liberating benefactors, the godless Shiites painted the American
flag on the steps of their houses of unholy worship, desecrating it with
each passing step. How dare they step on our flag, blessed by our god?

How dare they, indeed.

Maybe next time terrorists attack the United States (and there will be a
next time), we won't be so stupid to ask, "Why do they hate us?"